Posted
by
timothy
on Sunday November 20, 2011 @11:32AM
from the object-lesson dept.

theodp writes "Among the new iOS 5 features is Reminders, which Apple explains this way: 'Say you need to remember to pick up milk during your next grocery trip. Since Reminders can be location based, you'll get an alert as soon as you pull into the supermarket parking lot.' But does Reminders infringe on a newly-granted patent to Amazon for Location Aware Reminders, which covers the use of location based reminders to remind a user 'to purchase certain items such as, for example, as milk, bread, and eggs'? Or could Reminders run afoul of Google's new patent for Geocoding Personal Information, which covers triggering a voice reminder or making a computing device vibrate when a user approaches a location if 'one of the user's events is a task to pick up milk and bread'? Not to be left out of the 'Got Milk?' patent race, Apple also has a patent pending for Computer Systems and Methods for Collecting, Associating, and/or Retrieving Data, which covers providing a reminder to a user whose 'to do' list includes 'get milk' when the user's location matches 'a store that sells the item "milk."' (Continues, below.)

theodp continues: "That should not be confused with Microsoft's pending patent for Geographic Reminders, which allows users to specify reminders such as 'pick up milk if I am within a ten minutes drive of any grocery store.' That all four tech giants chose to pursue remember-the-milk patents — and the USPTO is considering and granting them — is all the more remarkable considering that Microsoft suggested location-based reminders were obvious in a 2005 patent filing, which informed the USPTO that 'a conventional reminder application may give the user relevant information at a given location, such as 'You're near a grocery store, and you need milk at home.' So much for that immediate patent quality improvement promised by the America Invents Act!"

Yea, I was thinking it was the lunatics running the asylum, but it might be lawyers, indeed. What a sorry state of affairs that this kind of BS is not stopped at the door. "Get the fuck out and don't try that crap again".

That's the problem with asking "who can we blame?". When something bad happens usually there are many people who contributed to it happening. So people usually blame the person they dislike the most. In this example you dislike unscrupulous corporate executives more than you dislike unscrupulous lawyers, so you blame the executives. The person you responded to blamed the lawyers. They're both responsible.

A more useful question would be "how can we prevent this in the future?". There is no shortage of unscrupulous lawyers and corporate executives. As long as the patent system exists in it's current form someone will abuse it. The only way to prevent abuses like this is to change the patent laws.

The problem is that we expect people who are paid to create profits and shareholder value to not use the laws to the maximum allowed extent to achieve those goals. The problem is with the laws and who is making them. Yes, to a certain extent, it would help if we could simply get all executives to agree to not be assholes voluntarily, but that's unlikely to happen.

At this point, I think the concepts that we are using when we create and enforce patents need a serious update to deal with both the innovation

No, the problem is that under the "obviousness" and overbroadness standards, 99% of the patents of the past 20 years probably should not have been granted, but the patent office is overwhelmed and incompetent in equal measure.

With some proper user-friendly dev tools it should be trivial to bypass patents such as this. "If location == supermarket then run milkreminder" shouldn't require much of a brain for the end suer to figure out, or read from a guide.

But of course, development tools and computer programming that is usable by ordinary mortals is apparently in the same folder as food for the poor, equal wages and general fair conduct that no one with influence is willing to do.

For those who religiously doesn't RTF anything linked on/., here's the excerpt from the act [gpo.gov].

``Sec. 102. Conditions for patentability; novelty

``(a) Novelty; Prior Art.--A person shall be entitled to a patentunless--
``(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a
printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise
available to the public before the effective filing date of the
claimed invention; or
``(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued
under section 151, or in an application for patent published or
deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or
application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was
effectively filed before the effective filing date of the
claimed invention.

``(b) Exceptions.--
``(1) Disclosures made 1 year or less before the effective
filing date of the claimed invention.--A disclosure made 1 year
or less before the effective filing date of a claimed invention
shall not be prior art to the claimed invention under subsection
(a)(1) if--
``(A) the disclosure was made by the inventor or
joint inventor or by another who obtained the subject
matter disclosed directly or indirectly from the
inventor or a joint inventor; or
``(B) the subject matter disclosed had, before such
disclosure, been publicly disclosed by the inventor or a
joint inventor or another who obtained the subject
matter disclosed directly or indirectly from the
inventor or a joint inventor.

I.e. "If it was published or used in any form before - patent's no go, unless the one publishing/using was inventor - then he has a year to patent it", which should encourage publishing inventions early.

Most people don't know how to use most of the features of their phone, their computer and probably their car's radio. That was one of the reasons Microsoft developed the much hated ribbon. Apple has understood this for a while and so designs stuff to "just work", or more accurately "do it for you". That seems fairly reasonable to me, it saves having to set up a location for that task if the phone just knows that milk is bought in shops so it should remind you when you get to one.

Actually there is evidence now that Bell lied and visited a patent office to view Greys patent application before Bell filed his own, In fact if Bell offered the same evidence today in a modern court he would have not been awarded the patent. Bell also avoided any recognition that he invented the telephone in his future years, maybe guilt was on his conscious,

Once you have bricks generally available in the market place, you can't patent the brick outhouse.

True, but you probably can prevent other people from selling their own brick outhouses while you drag them though the courts, during which time you have the market to yourself. It works best in the tech world where a delay of a year can be worth billions and the few million on legal fees are easy to justify.

I wish the slashdot crowd would stop bashing the lawyers whenever a story about patents, trademarks, copyright, etc is published. How are the corporate lawyers to blame for this? If the legal system makes it possible for commercial actors to compete using patent lawsuits, the other actors are bound to do the same in self defence. It's economically rational.

Right, because lawyers never push the envelope.

There is no law that can't be stretched just a little. Then a little more.Its impossible to write a law so comprehensive that no one can find a way to weasel more out of than was intended.

Instead of finding the line, and backing away from it, lawyers see their job as finding the line and stepping over it just a tiny bit.Then a tiny bit more. Soon its Katy bar the door, with a whole body of court decisions to back them up.

This is where out US patent group, judicial branch, executive branch, I don't know who exactly, needs to step in and say "YOU DID NOT INVENT REMINDING PEOPLE TO DO STUFF!" and prevent these companies from spending (wasting) money and time on winning the patent to do it. Their struggle to win that patent is not value adding for the country in any way whatsoever, but they'll do it anyway for their own gain. It's wasted money that could better go into R&D, for example. So tell them now, level the field... and prevent all that wasted effort.

...I don't know who exactly, needs to step in and say "YOU DID NOT INVENT REMINDING PEOPLE TO DO STUFF!" and prevent these companies from spending (wasting) money and time on winning the patent... prevent all that wasted effort.

Yes, but whoever it is that might step in and stop the madness, remember, they likely are lawyers themselves, or sons of lawyers, or otherwise deeply connected to the legal profession. Effort is not wasted when it leads to remuneration of yourself, your family, or your colleagues.

I imagine the number of federal politicians (President, Vice President, Representatives, and Senators) that have not been a lawyer (or involved in law) at some point is very, very small. The only one that comes to mind is Ron Paul, who is a medical doctor. (Incidentally, the only reason I remember this is because of all the reading I've done on him over the years and I was surprised to find that he's a doctor and not a lawyer.)

Supreme Court justices obviously don't count as they were all lawyers at some poi

"I don't know who exactly, needs to step in and say "YOU DID NOT INVENT REMINDING PEOPLE TO DO STUFF!" "
The USPTO (They are in charge of patents). But oh no, if you go to enough "schooling" you can get a license to be a professional lier (did I mean lawyer?). They like to talk of "professional ethics" - but they will use a mouse while writing a patent for a mouse - and the patent examiner will use a mouse while granting the patent. Then the little guy trying to sell a computer with a mouse can pay $5

This, and I think a patent like this misses the point. This is a patent on doing something, not on a method for doing something. A morally defensible patent needs to define a particular, specific method for accomplishing a goal. Furthermore, that method itself needs to be non-obvious to an expert who has been asked to achieve that goal.

How exactly does one get a patent on location-based reminders? I know I'm not the only one who has considered that idea and the actual implementation should be fairly straightforward (when you consider that APIs and hardware required for it all exist, hell even if you go the "IN THE CLOUD" route it would be relatively easy to figure out (Track position constantly, periodic "pings" to "The Cloud" that pass along your approximate coordinates, in return you get a JSON/XML reply with any nearby reminder positions which are cached locally, if/when you are close enough to a reminder position your device reminds you, new reminders are automagically submitted to the same "Cloud server", for local storage you just skip "The Cloud" and store everything locally)).

How exactly does one get a patent on location-based reminders? I know I'm not the only one who has considered that idea and the actual implementation should be fairly straightforward (when you consider that APIs and hardware required for it all exist, hell even if you go the "IN THE CLOUD" route it would be relatively easy to figure out (Track position constantly, periodic "pings" to "The Cloud" that pass along your approximate coordinates, in return you get a JSON/XML reply with any nearby reminder positions which are cached locally, if/when you are close enough to a reminder position your device reminds you, new reminders are automagically submitted to the same "Cloud server", for local storage you just skip "The Cloud" and store everything locally)).

The whole concept of "obvious to a person skilled in the art" has been ground into the dirt for 20+ years now.

The worst part is that this patent is for something that is obvious even to someone not skilled in the art. The point of that clause is that for something to be unpatentable is that even if it is not obvious to the average person, it is obvious to "a person skilled in the art". This is a patent on something that is obvious to just about anyone.

I have a Garmin Edge bike computer, which I got back in 2006. I can create courses on this and have it notify me of important things along the route (eg, "slow down", "right turn"). This seems like it's the same concept. Even though it has nothing to do with milk, could this be shown as prior art?

Heck, I would think any Navigation application could be shown as prior art, as it reminds you to turn right or left.

You shouldn't ignore the stupidity of the patent system any more than we should ignore a burglar who only targets the opposite of your gender. Sure, you may not be directly effected directly, but it affects society.

Patent trolls stifle innovation, make the development of new products more expensive and have a negative effect on us all, even if it's only an indirect effect.

I can still innovate all I want. The US's obsession with IP shows me that the US doesn't want new products to be manufactured or sold here. There are plenty of people that aren't Americans, and they like jobs and products just as much as we do.

Sure, you can innovate all you want. But if you try to make a living by selling those innovations and run into someone who bought a stupidly obvious patent that should never have been granted, prepare to be bankrupted by the legal system that you suggested we simply ignore since we're all criminals anyway.

And don't think that being in another country will protect you. Every developed country on the planet has a patent system. It won't necessarily be an American who rips you a new one.

Ja I was thinking like, doesn't having a passenger in the car who sees the store and reminds you we're out of milk at home fall under prior art? *facepalm* What'll they patent next, a sign for a urinal that reminds you to kind of lean into the urinal to save on splatter?

. I'm going to take out a patent on Claim 1. Executing logic and probability calculations in a computing machine,Claim 2. Representing objects or aspects of reality, and in particular physical objects in spatiotemporal situation-types using binary numeric symbols. andClaim 3. Applying the logic and probability calculations of claim 1. to the symbolic representations o claim 2 in order to have the computing machine discover significant associations between physical objects of different types in different ste

So now a location-based reminder is a fucking patentable thing? What's next, a patent on something that remembers phone numbers for you?

I think next, they will figure out that simply reminding you to buy milk when you are near a store isn't very smart. You buy the milk, then it sits in your car while you go to work. When you get back out of work, you see the milk is spoiled. Next, the patent will be for "location based reminders that remind you to buy milk when you are on your way home and you are near a store that is within 30 minutes of your house ". I work 38 miles from home - which in the morning is a 40 minute drive and on the way h

After all, we can pretty much say that any satnav is prior art. You tell it to give you a reminder when you're near your destination and lo and behold, when you're near it it does indeed inform you that you have arrived at the location.

The question is how, exactly, the patent applications are phrased and what, exactly, they cover. From the summary, for example, the Google one just covers a spoken voice and/or vibration.. in theory that would mean it doesn't cover a text and/or image reminder.. if that is the case it may even have been to specifically avoid a patent that covers the text or image implementation.

You are absolutely correct... the details of the patent claims (and supporting specification) are very important.However, the selection of the examiner is also extremely important.I won't be surprised if one of these patents is issued in a first action allowance, even if another (perhaps even narrower) receives a final rejection.

Some companies even submit multiple applications with minor tweaks to the abstract so that they go into different branches of art.When the first examiner allows the patent, you aba

I'd like to say I hope that we get some kind of patent reform which fixes all of this, but to be honest I don't understand it well enough to state with any confidence what needs to happen. IANAPL. Can someone who is shed some light on what would need to happen for this quagmire to end?

For the publicly traded companies to stop doing this, it has to stop helping boost stock shares. That means stockholders have to learn that a company doesn't become more attractive just because it patented something, but only if that patent will actually make the company a profit.

These are the same stockholders who will sell a very profitable company short because some metric says to always sell whenever employment costs in that industry have risen to over 18% or so of total operating costs, then invest in

The problem is that it does. Look at what happened to Sun. It had some very nice patents. So obviously people wanted it - for the patents of course. That made it attractive, because you could use that sort of stuff to bully other companies into giving you a cut over the mobile technologies.

Can someone who is shed some light on what would need to happen for this quagmire to end?

A gradually increasing restriction on granting new silly, obvious patents. A gradual raising of the bar in what it takes to defend a patent successfully.

The real problem is: any shock to the status quo will make the people with money nervous, they'll feel uncertain about the future and less confident in predicting how they are going to turn their giant pile of cash into a more giant pile of cash, and in the face of that uncertainty, they'll just sit on their piles and watch them shrink slowly instead of putting the money at risk (in use).

Patents are a big part of that security blanket for investors, it makes them feel warm and fuzzy knowing how they can strike back at other kids who might try to steal their lunch money, it's kind of like that line "God created man, but Mr. Smith & Wesson made all men equal." A smaller version of nuclear detente'. If you have access to a sufficient nuclear arsenal of patents, you can go up against much larger companies and hold your own with a threat of mutual annihilation.

I put part of the blame on the.com bubble - investors were feeling all warm and fuzzy then, and the patent office was helping them feel that way by granting them patents on whatever they wanted. Change the rules quickly, and you'll have negative economic consequences.

I don't need a reminder on what to get, I need a reminder on what I forgot to get. Let's say I'm baking bread and I put down that I need flour. However, I forgot that used up my yeast when I last baked two weeks ago and I forgot to put that down on my list. The "you forgot to get" feature would look at my past purchasing history and tell me, hey you might want to check if you have enough yeast since you last purchased yeast 6 months ago. Maybe even it could see if a phone is currently located in the

The more interesting data mining is currently implemented as trade secrets. Apparently, the credit card companies can predict [thedailybeast.com], with 99% accuracy, if you are going to get a divorce within the next two years.

They could do useful little tricks like reminding you about the yeast at the checkout counter, but that would be creepy to most people and not as profitable for the company with the data.

The more interesting data mining is currently implemented as trade secrets. Apparently, the credit card companies can predict, with 99% accuracy, if you are going to get a divorce within the next two years.

Note that Visa flat-out denied it. Which is unusual; usually there's a mealy-mouthed denial or a refusal to admit or deny it.

Also, the banks don't usually know what you bought, only where you bought it. This makes such precision a little harder. That's why there's 'loyalty cards'.

The denial I read said "Visa does not track marital status" blah blah blah, o.k. Visa may not, but the credit reporting bureaus used by the banks which issue Visa cards sure as hell do. And, I get a statement at the end of the year that breaks down my purchases into food, fuel, entertainment, etc. I find it hard to believe that nobody is tracking any of that data at a higher level of granularity than they are reporting it back to me... maybe not, maybe I'm just paranoid, but I know that 25 years ago, mana

I don't need a reminder on what to get, I need a reminder on what I forgot to get. Let's say I'm baking bread and I put down that I need flour. However, I forgot that used up my yeast when I last baked two weeks ago and I forgot to put that down on my list. The "you forgot to get" feature would look at my past purchasing history and tell me, hey you might want to check if you have enough yeast since you last purchased yeast 6 months ago. Maybe even it could see if a phone is currently located in the house where you live, is one of your families phones and send a text message asking them to check and see if there is any yeast in the cupboard.

With regard to your use case, if you used a recipe and it was in an application on your device, you could track the usage and know exactly how much you had left. Exapanding that a bit, use the bar code, scanned by the camera on the device, to record which brand you use. Cross reference that with a coupon management application to determine who has the best price today and add it to a shopping list, tagged with the geolocation of the store. The coupons are scanned and tagged to determine if they are store

Someone in a position of authority in Government has got to wake up and say STOP!
This shit has gone so far beyond ridiculous, I doubt that there is a word or phrase to describe it other than FUBAR.
(Change the meaning of "R" from recognition to recovery)

this sure seems to reek of obvious. The fact that multiple companies are racing to patent essentially the same thing--which is just seemingly logical extension of an existing idea (reminders)--seems to underscore that.

Right now, you can patent anything, and if you can get it past the USPTO, you're a winner: you can collect royalties as long as you keep your demands below what it would cost to strike down your patent. There is almost no risk or downside (at worst, you lose what you paid for getting the patent, maybe $10k).

Since lawyers are ultimately driving this, maybe we can fix it by giving lawyers an incentive: create laws that allow companies to be sued for damages if they obtain patents if they should reasonably have known about prior art. This might restore some balance to the patent system, and companies would think twice about filing bad patents if they incur potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in liability.

It's more likely that they will approve ALL of them with the theory of "let the courts sort it out." The end result of which is that the big companies continue as business as usual, but any smaller company that tries to implement a similar thing will find themselves quickly on the wrong end of a patent infringement suit from one of the big players. Of course that's par for the course right now, the primary purpose of patents shifted from protecting innovation to stifling it years ago.

Any time an exceedingly obvious patent is filed by a company, it should be immediately placed in the public domain, and the company that filed it should be forced to pay royalties to the government. Not only would this reduce the amount of stupid patent filings and court battles, it would get our national debt paid off within a year or two.

Are going to run into trouble, since the guys at MIT were doing the same thing in the 90s. http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~rhodes/Papers/wearhive.html [mit.edu], for example. I ran across a paper in the mid 90's about leaving messages for other users in specific locations. They also published some articles about some very neat camera things things they were doing, such as recognizing someone's face via a camera the wearable user was wearing, and looking up up relevant information on that user (I think out of BBDB.)

So if you're looking for prior art to go patent busting on these big companies, a good place to start would be in the wearable computer projects in the 90's. A lot of these guys published in the journal of the ACM, too. Apple, Google and Amazon think their balls are all shiny and they're doing something new, but they're not.

Except that many patents these days are so broad as to not include any way of implementing what they describe (which means they are no better than a trade secret) AND the "limited time" isn't even applicable anymore when you realize just how long that time frame is and how fast the technology is progressing.

I'm not an expert on patents in the 19th and early 20th centuries to know for certain if they did in fact encourage invention at that time or not (I suspect it was really a bit of a mixed bag). But I am quite certain that by the end of the 20th century and in the early 21st century they do no such thing, and in fact actively stifle innovation to large degree. At this point there is no way to invent ANYTHING without running afoul of one patent or another. Even something new and novel that nobody has ever even dreamed of is likely to run afoul of one patent or another on the shape of it's case, the method of powering it, or the user interface to run it (among other ridiculous things).

Patents today are badly broken. They protect mega-corps at the expense of small time inventors. they protect exactly the people who need it least against those who would require it the most. It's time they were abolished, or at the very least, subjected to a MAJOR overhaul.

Takes effect on the Ides of March, 2012. For new filings after date. Those new filings will start to come out of the Patent Office mill around 2017. Most professionals in the patent field (including me) don't think the new law will change patent practice much.

Like many others in my field, I prefer to call it by its original name, the "Smith-Leahy Act," since it, disappointingly, doesn't provide meaningful improvement in "inventing."

If the nation's first patent officer, Thomas Jefferson, knew what his beloved system has been turned into, he'd have abandoned the idea entirely, I believe.

He even turned himself down for patents and he was the guy who approved patents!

He also believed that the more important any technical or scientific advance was for society, the shorter the patent should last. If we had followed his original intent, everything in the iPhone would already be public domain.

I take BART into work and sometimes got a ride home, and sometimes I'd forget to pick up my car. So , I realised that location based alarms were a technically feasable feature using GPS units or the newer cellphones that were location aware - so you'd be able to setup reminders to pick up your car when the bay bridge was crossed, or pick up milk when you entered a supermarket.

Back then there was no iPhone and getting the location info on most phones was just too much trouble so I abandoned the idea after a

Has it occurred to anyone that not making yourself have the mental discipline to remember what errands you have to do on a given day might just be eroding our mental faculties much sooner than otherwise? Seriously: The human brain is like any other part of your body, and even more so in some ways: If you never have to think for yourself, your ability to do so diminishes. If you've got an "app" for everything on your phone, what are you going to do when you don't happen to have your phone with you, or it's n

Maybe it's different for you guys, but generally we know when we need to go to the grocery store. We use this innovative tool - we like to call it a "grocery list" - to which we add an item when we run out of it. Then, when we go to the grocery store, we take said "grocery list" with us and purchase the items contained therein. Note that we expressly do not limit ourselves to purchasing only the items on the list.

If we haven't gone to the grocery store recently, it's almost certainly due to our schedules ra

I see no problem with three companies having patents for location aware reminders, remember patents are supposed to protect an implementation. To use a car analogy, how many patents are their for carburetors.

The problem stems from overly broad patents. It breaks down to "I have a patent for location aware reminders now no one else can do it." is bad, while "I have a patent for doing location aware reminders in this way." is good;.

Ah, you mean like Germany where the Samsung Tab got banned because it was a rectangle? I know people love saying "well, that's just them", but the reality is everyone is being affected by stupid laws like this. ACTA, anyone?

Forget "skilled in the art" even lay people found this obvious! I remember many years ago thinking that if my GPS knew where I was it would seem logical that it could also tell me what to do when I was there. Later I was frustrated that my PDA had calendar, to-do list, and GPS, and yet had no way of combining the three of them. I'm technologically inclined, but I'm certainly not "skilled in the art" of making phones/GPSs/PDAs/etc.